Beauty and the Wolf / Their Miracle Twins (34 page)

Her eyes flew to his. ‘The kiss was necessary. You said so yourself.’

He leaned on the kitchen island and crossed his arms across his broad chest and asked her what he’d really wanted to know all evening. What he’d been thinking about since the cave. ‘The first kiss was necessary for show. What was the second one about?’

Her eyes flew to his and her mouth parted on a silent gasp. It reminded him immediately of the way her lips had felt under his. How his tongue had slipped past her defences into the confused heat of her mouth and gone to town. How she’d kissed him back.

‘I …’ Heat flared in her cheeks bringing that hayloft tumbling back to mind. What he wouldn’t give to have a big pile of fresh straw somewhere handy right now. To lay her back in it. To get straw in places it wasn’t meant to be. He crossed his ankles to compress the sudden tingling at the other end of his
legs. But he didn’t rescue her. What she said next would be very telling.

‘You wanted it to be convincing …’ she stammered.

She looked pained but he wasn’t in the mood for politely letting it go. Not if they were going to be sharing a roof. There was too much at stake. One of them had to talk about the giant
thing
simmering between them that they’d both been politely ignoring. ‘We made Nan blush. That’s unprecedented. Why did you really do it?’

She twisted and untwisted the fabric of her dress in her hands like she had back in that London hospital. He was sure she didn’t notice, but
he
noticed because every twist momentarily flashed a hint more of long leg. He fought the surge of desire and concentrated on backing her into the emotional corner he knew would reveal the truth. Whatever it might be.

He took a breath and a risk. ‘You wanted to kiss me.’

Her eyes flared. ‘Get over yourself, Flynn. I was curious …’

‘Curious?’

Her chin lifted defiantly. ‘You’ve been going to town with the touching … all this time. I just wanted to see if the main attraction was worth the hype of the previews.’

Bull.
She wanted to kiss him. Inexplicable warmth surged through him. He pushed slowly away from the island bench. She was such a terrible liar now he knew what to look for. The parted lips, the darting glance, the wringing hands …

‘So how did I do?’

Her wild eyes swung back to him. ‘It was … fine.’

‘Fine?’

‘Acceptable.’

Ouch.
Pride dragged out his ego to defend its honour. ‘You know that it wasn’t even close to being the main attraction. Most people would consider kissing the preview …’

He certainly did, the way she’d opened up to his thrusting tongue … It put images in his head he’d had no business thinking in the presence of his grandparents. Or Belinda Rochester.

‘Wow. You have a cast-iron ego, don’t you?’ she said now.

That halted his advance when his toes nearly touched hers and he simmered down on her, the heat from the fire baking even hotter parts of him that were already ablaze. Every part of his body was hyper-alert. ‘Would you like references? From previous satisfied customers?’

The laugh that barked from her was more about the release of pressure than any delight she took in his words. She leaned back away from him. ‘No, thank you.’

‘Then you leave me no alternative but to prove it to you.’

He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close to him, and then swooped down to take her outraged mouth with his. She held herself stiff and frozen for seconds and the small part of him that was still semi-conscious wondered if he’d misjudged her. But her struggles were half-hearted and the squirming only served to grind them closer together in some very intimate places. Places that were already on high alert.

His body responded graphically to the torturous rubbing, and her eyes flew open. She stared at him with curiosity blazing out of the sapphire depths, and her struggling ceased. His hands roamed freely across the soft exposed skin of her back and shoulders as his mouth echoed them across her lips.

Slowly, so slowly, she relaxed in his arms until her own crept up to circle his neck and she uttered a tiny little sigh. Her mouth matched his exploration and his whole body twitched as she tentatively slid her tongue in to duel with his, her delicate teeth nipping at his lips. She gasped when he returned the favour.

‘Why are you smiling?’ he murmured against the lips that had parted in a grin against his.

She stretched more fully against him, pressing hard nipples into his chest. The fact that his kisses had made them like that only burned him more. ‘If you’d asked me this morning how you and I would be spending our wedding night,’ she breathed,
hot and heavy against his skin, ‘this would have been the last thing I would have imagined.’

‘And that’s funny?’

‘Only because it’s the first thing most people would imagine.’

He took her mouth again, hard and hungry. In case it was the last chance he got. ‘You have a point. But I say we just go with it …’

But Bel showed no signs of slowing and she led him backwards until the sofa edge hit her calves. Okay, so things were officially not going at all as he’d expected either. He took her slight weight and eased her down onto her back before sinking down on top of her, sliding sideways slightly so that he didn’t press uncomfortably on her abdomen. Where two little lives nestled.

He happily pressed into her everywhere else—hard where she was soft, flesh against flesh. Her fingers speared through his hair and kept his mouth locked on hers and his own traced down the flushed heat of her skin—one resting just below the curve of a breast and the other sliding to her thigh. He bunched her skirt and dragged it upwards, desperate to feel the silken length of those long legs against his hands. He stroked the back of his hand clear up to where the thin strap of her panties crossed her hip.

Her eyes flew open again. And stayed open. She twisted her mouth free and took several deep breaths. Flynn shifted his focus to her throat, which suddenly stretched out enticingly in front of him, pale and luminous.

‘Flynn …’ Small hands pushed ineffectively against him.

His body on fire, he mouthed his way to the high point in her jaw, just below her earlobe, and breathed into it, ‘What?’

Bel groaned deep at the back of her throat and pressed into his lips. The sound did terrible things to his self-control and he arched his desire more firmly against her. God, why hadn’t they been doing this from the beginning?

‘Flynn …!’

The firm tone finally got his attention. He pulled his mouth free and stared at her. She lay below him, flushed, dishevelled, undignified and utterly gorgeous. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t … um …’ Her chest rose and fell enticingly with the strain of speaking. ‘This can’t …’

This can’t happen.

He knew that. Somewhere. But his body sure hadn’t got the message. Frustration screamed through him. ‘You started it, Princess.’ He’d only planned on kissing her; she was the one who’d moved things to the sofa.

‘I know, I … Oh, God …’ Her luminous eyes narrowed in a pained frown. ‘Let me up. I can’t think while you’re …’

Harder than a dry riverbed for you?

Also not something he’d expected tonight. Though he couldn’t be sorry.

He shifted his weight so that she could sit up, and carefully slid the hem of her dress back down for her. She pushed herself into a more upright position. Awkward and embarrassed and—his stomach sank—was that a flare of shame?

‘I should explain …’

He slid his eyes away, not ready for what was going to come. ‘Nothing to explain,’ he gritted.

‘No, Flynn. I should explain.’ She swung her legs to the floor and pushed herself more respectably into the sofa back. Then she met his eyes. And held them. ‘I’m a virgin, Flynn.’

If it was possible for all the air to get sucked out of his lungs just as a new lot rushed in, it happened, robbing him of speech.

A virgin?

The smile she gave him was unsteady. ‘So all of … this … is a bit new to me.’

He mastered the air flailing around in his lungs and forced it into words. ‘All of it?’ His inner caveman roared and thumped the ground with his club.
His
were the first hands on her perfect flesh? She’d never even got horizontal with a man?

‘Not the kissing, but …’ She shrugged. The pink high in her cheeks made the blue of her raised eyes ever more startling. More beautiful.

He had air now but was still basically speechless. ‘How?’

She laughed, throaty and low. ‘Bad management?’

The awkwardness was still there. He pushed fully upright and turned more towards her. ‘No, really. How? Why?’

Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly. But eventually she said, ‘I’ve been waiting for Mr Right.’

He narrowed his eyes. Something niggled. A girl like her must have had a world of offers at the ready. But this was Belinda Rochester he was talking to. ‘Mr Right or Mr Good Enough For You?’

She nearly managed to hide the wince. But then she locked clear, deep blue eyes on his. ‘Okay. Yes. I was waiting for someone special. But not because I thought I was,’ she raced on. ‘I just … set a high bar.’

The best man she ever knew …

Old doubts came surging back. He waved his hands towards the sofa, his voice thick. ‘So what was this? Some kind of consolation prize?’

Bel took a deep breath and watched Flynn’s face streak ashen. He thought she was telling him he didn’t measure up. She knew enough about old pain to recognise it when she saw it. The part of her that had lived her whole life not being good enough cried out for the sudden evidence of it in him. Somehow he was totally missing the fact that she’d just been lying spread-eagled under him with her skirt hiked high, and was focusing instead on a few simple words.

And getting them totally wrong.

She swallowed her umbrage. There was only one path through shattered feelings: honesty, carefully trodden and clearly stated. But it was a terrifying path. Her heart pounded noisily. ‘
This
was about us, Flynn. You and me and the way the air thickens when we’re sharing it.’

The doubt in his eyes didn’t dissipate. ‘You don’t deny it?’

‘How can I? I feel it as much as you do, even if I don’t quite understand it.’

He scoffed, but his eyes were wary. ‘You’re making the assumption that it’s mutual—’

It would be easy to blush, to slip back into Bel-of-six-months-ago paradigm and let the doubt silence her. But then confidence—raw and sexual and new—surged through her. She suddenly became aware of every hidden corner of her body. ‘Two minutes ago we were exchanging oxygen.’ Her eyes meshed with his. ‘It’s mutual.’

He crossed his arms across his broad chest. ‘Maybe I’m just in this for a quick—’

‘With a Rochester girl?’ she cut in. ‘I don’t think so. That’s more a reason for
not
coming near me.’ She noted the way he stood, chest heaving, just millimetres from her. Glaring down at her. She lifted her chin. ‘Yet here we are, both panting like a pair of worn out gladiators.’

And here she was, desperate to feel that hard chest under her hands again. And desperate that he understood she was breathing heavily for
him
.

‘I’ll grant you there’s chemistry between us,’ he conceded. ‘But I’m no way near worn out. I’m just getting started.’

The lascivious look in his eyes—so full of promise, so full of the dangerously unknown—chased her off. She hadn’t put a halt to their heady kissing and offloaded her biggest secret only to leap straight back into his arms. She turned for the back of the house where the spare room was. ‘Well, you’re going to have to finish on your own then. I’m exhausted and going to bed.’

‘I’ll join you.’

She rounded back, laughing roughly. ‘That wasn’t an invitation.’

‘I know.’

Was he possibly that obtuse? ‘We’re not having sex, Flynn.’

‘I wasn’t offering sex, Belinda.’

She reeled. ‘Then what …?’

‘You’ve just admitted to this fatal attraction between us. I thought it would be worth … exploring. Testing.’

‘Testing?’

‘The parameters. See how far it goes. What if it’s just the magic of the day talking?’

Today was as far from actual magic as she could imagine being. A business transaction in the Twilight Zone. ‘Then we’d be better off testing it tomorrow.’ Not that she had any intention of that either. No matter what her hopeless heart wanted.

He glanced at the kitchen clock. ‘It
is
tomorrow. Just.’

‘Flynn, this is ridiculous …’ And way too calculated. And when did he get that close?

‘Is it?’ His breath blew the tiny hairs on her forehead to attention. ‘It wasn’t ten minutes ago. It felt pretty un-ridiculous then. Like something that’s been waiting to happen since we first met.’

‘I’m not interested in—’

‘Let’s find out, shall we?’

He hauled her against his hard body and lowered his mouth to hers.

Proving a point.

Making a statement.

Marking his territory.

It was nothing like his last kiss. Or their first one. She pulled herself free and wiped her hand across lips which tingled treacherously despite his presumption. He didn’t try all that hard to keep her.

‘You know I can see you as the bad-boy teenager every now and again,’ she panted, staring closely at the way the grey of his eyes simmered dangerously. ‘But somehow, deep down, it’s not quite convincing. Even now you look quite sorry to have just manhandled me.’

‘Maybe I just lack commitment to my own cause?’

‘Meaning?’

He stepped closer. ‘Meaning first I was the good-boy-that-turned-bad, then I was the bad-boy-that-came-good. Maybe all the time I should have just been a more balanced mix of both.’ He came to a halt a breath from her. ‘I should have just gone for what I needed and damn the consequences instead of endlessly apologising for imagined sins.’

She stared at him, not quite making the connection. ‘What do you need?’

‘Right now? You.’ This time his eyes backed him up.

Her pulse lurched.

‘Especially now that I understand what it is about you that drives me so crazy. I can get past it. Get to more … productive … aspects.’